I can fill you in on a less cynical reason for the timing...it's been at least a few months in the making, but it has been on hold because Jenna was a bride's maid in a wedding last weekend. As a matter of etiquette, it would have been gauche for her to begin/announce her engagement with her friends nuptials so close at hand.

Bush has never run the office by poll and as a lame duck cares even less what the daily snapshot of a poll says. Nor is he the type of man who would let others, even political allies, use his daughter's wedding to advance their fortunes, if such a scenario even exists.

I think it is reasonable that Jenna made a decision or that Laura mused about the advantages of a WH wedding. Fairy Tale, great staff, free wedding planning , yada yada, but as for doing it for political points. Get real. Beyond the fact that everything a President does has political impact, I dont think that everything that the President does is designed for political impact.

I assume she isn't marrying a guy running for congress in 2008. absent that, give the girl a break.

The cynicism, of course, really just acknowledges that the mindless drek that the media puts out is in fact aimed at women.

No guy cares about a wedding.

Women are the audience for the news biz. Only 40% of them, too! But it's enough to make a living off of.

Those women mediate every public discussion.

It's a step up from previous centuries, with nettle :

Tis little matter / What are the sorts they sow, / For only one will grow ... The charlock on the fallow .. will not twice arise. The stinging nettle only / Will still be sure to stand ... It peoples towns, and towers / About the courts of kings ... (Housman),

and the house fly:

The fly is not reasoning well just now. A man buzzes at its ears. This is enough to render it incapable of good advice. If I would have it find truth, I should chase away this animal which holds its reason in check and disquiets that intelligence which governs kingdoms. (Lautreamont)

Which of Solomon's concubines was his poetry written for (if indeed it was his)?

Just what are those attributes of marriage-as-we-know it in Amerika that you find in the Bible? Must be either the love, the sex, the cohabitation or the wine. Those are exactly the attributes of a gay couple's relationship!

Where exactly in the Bible do you find those other 1000 privileges that Amerikan married couples have that singles and gay couples don't?

Jenna's got nice tits. Firm, obviously patriotic, can probably bend steel and generally have a good bounce to them. Jenna stuffs her tits into her blouses well and we generally are able to see a nice bustline that looks tight, long and able to take a mean hog.

Barbara Bush (the other twin) tits don't do anything for me though. Seem to be rather flat, maybe even a little liberal, and no bounce whatsoever.

Jenna knows how to work her tits. Barbara doesn't know what to do with her tits and they seem to be a burden for her.

Jenna gets her tits from her Mom, Laura, who has a nice pair and seem to be holding up under the pressure of the second term and bad polling. Barbara seniors tits on the other hand are just plain evil. Poor George Senior having to deal with Babs tits for his entire lifetime. Babs tits are obivously tough on terror but she needs a titectomy (medical term for chopping some of the tit). If Babs lost a few pounds on each tit and wore a cone bra she might be doable but I bet she is a bossy bottom-I hate bossy bottoms.

Lynn Cheney has the most conservative, tough on terror tits that you will find on any woman walking the earth.

Lynn Cheney's left tit could defuse a nuclear bomb while her right tit made a gourmet meal of coq au vin sprinkled with spices and shaved escargot.

Lynn Cheney's tits make a man proud to be American. They are in a continuous state of attention and you can't get any more patriotic than those two guns staring you in the eyes.

Lynn also knows how to work her tits. She always walk with the tits first so we have no choice but do honor and obey those unabashedly conservative milk bags.

Lynn's tits could break a commie cock in two and entice the toughest of necons into blind submission. The thought of those jugs doing their work on my business ties me in knots and would bring me to my knees with respect and adoration.

Karl sounds very authoritative until you find out that the guy didn't propose until yesterday.

Do you really think engagements are a surprise anymore? Even if they are for some people, they aren't for the daughter of the sitting president.

I only know what a co-worker told me. She was at the wedding last weekend where the President and First Lady were in attendance and the newly engaged daughter was a bride's maid. She said it was obvious that the "official" engagement was being put on hold until after that wedding and that announcement would be made this week.

I think gay people should protest this wedding. It is utterly unfair that Jenna be able to get married, while we cannot. And we should do whatever we can to disrupt it and make that day as miserable as possible for her and the President.